Sunday, April 2, 2023

Stormy Weather

 Yesterday gave us another storm. The day started out quite beautiful. Tim had bought some bales of insulation while it was on sale, and had been storing it in the house we are renovating. We didn't need all of it there. We only tore the bathroom and the kitchen down to the studs. We will can use the pink insulation in that, but the rest of the house will be insulated with blown in insulation, which will be blown down into the walls from the attic, so we decided to transport the rest of the bundles of insulation down to Grand Valley to be used in the building of the new house. 

It was a really beautiful day, warm. I wasn't wearing a coat. It was sunny. A perfect spring day. We stopped on the way to grab a quick bite to eat, and I heard some people talking about the weather. "Enjoy it," someone said. "It's going to change here in an hour."

'Huh,' I thought. Once back in the truck and on our way, I looked at the weather and saw 3 separate weather advisories, the last one placed just 15 minutes earlier. Earlier in the morning,  there had just been a wind advisory. As we left the house, a thunderstorm advisory had come up. This final alert was a warning. 70 MPH winds, severe thunderstorm with dangerous lightning, possibility of hail. Be prepared to take shelter. 

I looked up at the sky, and it had turned ominous amazingly quickly. We got to the property, and unloaded the bales of insulation and put them away. The wind was blowing pretty hard at that point, and the temperature had dropped noticeably. Tim started to drive up to the fifth wheel camper we use when we stay there. 

Incredulously, I looked over William's head. "We are NOT staying here. It's not safe!" He looked a little surprised, but he did not argue. We headed back down the road. He stopped to get gas. The truck rocked in the wind and the signs went clanging across the parking lot as the attendant chased them down. The thunder and lightning part hit before we got home. There is a lot of road construction going on, and those big signs, weighted down with sandbags, were blowing over every which way. We dodged one as it began rocking our way. It was obvious that the power was out in our stretch of town. 

We made the most of it, reading a couple of chapters of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. The storm noise outside added a certain ambiance. 

The storm itself only lasted an hour or so before moving on, The winds continued to gust, and a couple smaller storms moved in and then out. My daughter said the lightning was pink. I missed that part, but reading up on it, it says that this happens in snow clouds. The temperatures had dropped to the 20s, so I expect that was it. 

In any case, once the major part of the storm was over, we went out to have a looky-loo (I still use that all the time, Ed). There were some large trees down, and we saw that it would take a while before we got power back. We were surprised to see that the power come back on after only 4 hours or so, but it flickered on and off for a few hours. We shut down the television and computer to prevent surge damage, even though we have surge protectors. 

With all the storms down south, we were certainly lucky in comparison. 

An exciting thing happened. The furniture dealers came to pick up the furniture at the house we are renovating.  We met them there. One of the things going was an old buffet. I was pretty sure we had the drawers and I found them in pretty short order under a pile of Goodwill stuff. 

But know what else I found? A piece of pressed glass that I was quite sure was uranium glass. I could not wait to get it home and under a UV light. 



Much to my disappointment, it did not glow green. It glowed orange. 



(None of these pictures are mine. I tried to get a picture, but alas, 

I'm a novice. It didn't work for me.)

 In any case, my divided pressed glass bowl was probably made with selenium or cadmium, and the discovery led me off down an interesting rabbit hole as I learned a lot about an unfamiliar topic.

Finishing up, I went out to tell Tim about my exciting discoveries. I happened to think of some old cut glass his mother had given me. It glows purple under the black light. And I was off and exploring google once again. Manganese! Fascinating! 

Hope everyone had a good weekend. 

25 comments:

  1. I don't like the sound of that weather, hope it didn't cause to much damage. Manganese! The stuff I learn from blogs! Unfortunately it will have slipped my mind by tomorrow, making room for that day's facts.

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  2. Apparently car tyres contain cadmium and it's not safe to use old tyres to grow vegetables in them.

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  3. My goodness, you are certainly getting some storms over there.

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  4. Not exactly dodged, but nothing of yours damaged during the storm, a good thing. The glass with something viewable under a black light is interesting, and safe I hope.

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    1. The concentrations are small enough that the glass can be handled. They advise you not to eat from them. In my mind, this makes them interesting, but not something I'd be interested in collecting. I am not a fan of useless things.

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  5. I'm guessing it was the same system that dropped a tornado less than a mile from our house along with a lot of marble sized hail. Fortunately, although it destroyed some houses, it didn't kill anyone but our road has had plenty of looky-loos since as everyone wants to go see the damage firsthand. I might too if I didn't have more pressing things and that Facebook has been plastered with pictures of them for a couple days.

    I've heard of uranium glass and I'm sure I've seen some at estate auctions, but I don't know enough about them to buy them. I need to go down the rabbit hole for awhile and study up on them.

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    1. I will bet it was. We were trying to assess the extent of the damage and just drove up river about 5 minutes to see that there were enough huge trees down that clean up was going to take awhile. We were surprised that those old trees did not fall on any houses.

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  6. TG we haven’t had weather like that, but I am reminded of last year’s derecho and how we were without power for days.

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    1. I forgot about that. That was bad. All those roofs!

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  7. So glad that you got home safely

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    1. It was a bit of an eye popping trip. At one point, we were driving past a gas station and all of a sudden the air was filled with paper napkins swirling all over. It was like being in a snowstorm with crazy big flakes. It was good for a giggle.

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  8. Whoa! I can't believe you drove through that!
    Anyway, glad you made it home safe and had a cozy, interesting evening.

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  9. I can't drive in that scary, stormy weather. Years ago I drove my minivan through what I thought was a shallow puddle, only it wasn't! The van stalled out and water was coming in over my feet! I ended up buying a new vehicle as the van was declared "totaled" by the insurance company.

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  10. Many trees down, debris blown, power outages, Saturday's storm was worse than the week before with furious winds. The sound of chainsaws everywhere. Glad you are safe. The glass info is very interesting. Take care, Kris

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    1. It didn't seem bad in town, but boy, we got hammered back at the retirement property.

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  11. Typical spring weather. Small cells can kick up a lot of energy. Good that you are safe jacket or no jacket!

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  12. We are safe, and that's all that counts.

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  13. OK, I never knew that about old glass -- that it glows different colors depending on the minerals within. I've seen bright green depression glass before but I had no idea it might have uranium in it! (Is it radioactive? Now you're sending ME down a rabbit hole.)

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